eFax research reveals reliance upon outdated, insecure & expensive legacy fax servers as organisations move to enable their hybrid workforce

eFax, the world’s leading online fax solution, has announced research revealing IT decision-makers reliance upon outdated, insecure and expensive legacy on-premise fax servers, as their organisations move to enable a hybrid workforce

The research conducted on behalf of eFax by independent research organisation Vanson Bourne, has found that more than one third of UK IT decision-makers (35%) admit their organisations still rely upon on-premise fax servers.

They also found that the majority (89%) of decision-makers say they will likely move away from a reliance upon fax servers, as a direct result of enabling a new hybrid workforce to securely send and sign vital documents and paperwork.

When asked about the top challenges faced by their organisation when using on-premise fax servers, the majority (66%) of decision-makers cite outdated legacy technology with limited functionality.

Nearly half (49%) say fax servers are insecure, followed by 43% saying they are expensive to install, run, maintain and upgrade, and roughly one third (31%) state they are unreliable and unfit for the resilient and regulatory demands of today.

“This latest evidence from eFax shows a significant amount of IT decision-makers still rely on outdated, insecure, expensive and unreliable on-premise fax server legacy technology, no longer fit for purpose, at the precise moment they are aiming to enable their new hybrid workforces to securely, send and sign vital documents,” said Scott Wilson, Director of Customer Experience, eFax.

“There’s no business case for wasting vital time, money and resources on outdated legacy fax servers, when more cost-effective, reliable, secure alternatives exist in today’s digital age. It’s time to scrap the server,” continued Wilson.

Just over a quarter (28%) of decision-makers admit to being completely confident in how vital business documents and paperwork will be securely shared and stored as their organisation moves to a hybrid workforce model.

The findings also found that over three quarters (76%) of UK IT Directors agree that increased workforce access to business documents and paperwork over the lockdown period has created an additional security risk to their organisation.

The top 3 costs associated with owning and operating an on-premise fax server cited by UK IT decision-makers are hardware maintenance costs (63%), Complex phone lines and fax number costs (60%), and on-going on-premise facilities costs (49%).

The eFax research surveyed 100 UK IT decision-makers across organisations in Business & Professional Services, Financial Services, IT, Retail, Distribution & Transport and Manufacturing industries.

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